Someone complained about the radicality of some of his positions. The reformists know that if they want to change things in the world they must listen to those who, like him, were on the side of the least
There are wonderful lives, lived in pursuit of one’s values, one’s deepest convictions, knowing how to build communities and knowing how to be alone when needed. Lives consecrated to the moral imperative to say what you believe in, not what you should say. There are splendid lives, lived by transforming, with the effort of a craftsman, the words that buzz between your brain and your head into places, tools, things that change the lives of others, making your own. Gino Strada lived one of these beautiful lives, full of meaning.
He suffered like few others, in his personal life and in his experience as a doctor and volunteer. He knew the death of those he loved and it was part of his life and that of those he did not know, because he arrived with his face disfigured by the explosion of a mine. He suffered for them, because a beautiful life often a life of suffering for others.
Gino was on the side of the last, always. The “damned of the earth” had in him a strenuous and courageous defender. The more they were alone in the world, the more they were forgotten and the more Gino took care of them, he tried to alleviate their suffering, their loneliness. But he was not a contemporary saint. It was a contemporary man. Someone who knows that existence is a dimension in which there is one community of destiny, a relationship, like an invisible thread, which binds, always and in any case, human beings to each other. He acted driven by strong civil, social and political motivations.
He was not a preacher. Era a peace fighter, an oxymoron that found a complete meaning in him.
Someone was complaining about the radicality of some of his positions. Try being moderate in a ward of a hospital ward in the desert where children arrive with their bellies slashed by a bomb, or contemplating, in Syria or Afghanistan, the cynicism of the West which is capable, at the same time, of exporting democracy to barrel of a gun and to abandon, as happens in Kabul, entire populations to the rule of violence and intolerance.
Gino was for peace, always and everywhere, always and in any case. It was not only with the words, often rough, but with the effort of those who made one of the most important voluntary organizations such as Emergency.
Father was also accused of being radical Alex Zanotelli. But those who did it had never been to the hell of Korogocho or to the landfills where children feed on waste and artisanal drugs. AND the reformists in particular they should know that, if they want to change things in the world, they have to deal with radicalism and conflict, they must always strive to listen, understand, translate into programs and decisions pushed that rise from the voice of those who know suffering and lives it.
The idea of one is not defended multi-ethnic society if the rights of those who risk drowning at sea are not defended, if those born here are not guaranteed to be Italian. You can’t talk about peace though wealth and poverty they are so unfairly distributed. To governments that have the sensitivity, the ability to identify solutions that ensure the removal of injustices. But always listening to the voice of those who share those sufferings, live them on their skin, represent them with the necessary strength.
With Gino one could sometimes disagree, obviously. But he was a great man, whom I loved. From today, it must be known, the poor, the marginalized, the “damned of the earth” are more alone.
Those who esteemed and appreciated him, hire now his point of view not as the tantrum of a restless man but as the urge to do so radicalism and reforms concrete are never two separate sisters. And that the rights of the weakest are always at the center.
August 13, 2021 (change August 13, 2021 | 17:59)
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